


Lesson Plans

by Milady1218



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milady1218/pseuds/Milady1218
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter is trying to deliver a guest lecture to some fifth-years, but things aren't going quite as smoothly as he hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lesson Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Impossible History of Annalise Doyle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1476787) by [Milady1218](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milady1218/pseuds/Milady1218). 



> This story builds off of characters and situations from my previous fanfiction.  
> If you aren't down for reading that one first, then you need to know these things:  
> 1) Annalise is, by way of an illegal potion able to turn adults back into children, technically the same person as Bellatrix Lestrange. Due to circumstances, she was inappropriately sorted into Ravenclaw. She is adopted, insecure, unpopular, and neurotic.  
> 2) Steven, likewise, is Lucius Malfoy. He's mostly got his life on track (At least, he thinks he does).  
> 3) Annalise and Steven grew up in the same small town. Because of that and their complicated past, they are frenemies by default.  
> 4) Harry Potter's son James used to pick on Annalise a lot. Consequently, she holds a major grudge against him and his immediate family.  
> 5) Harry doesn't know any of the above. Everyone else at Hogwarts knows #4 but not #1-3

“All right, class. Now, as I’m sure many of you know, I’m Harry Potter and today I’m here to–yes, miss, uh…” Harry gestured towards the Ravenclaw girl in the third row who had forcefully shot her hand up the instant he said his name. At once the narrowed eyes of everyone in the class turned on her as well for having interrupted the famous guest speaker. She, meanwhile, had her dark eyes fixed on Harry with uncomfortable intensity. Something about her–he couldn’t quite put his finger on what–gave him the creeps. “Can I get your name, please?”

“Annalise Doyle,” the girl supplied. “Anyway, I was wondering, Harry, if –“

“I’d rather you called me Mr. Potter,” Harry said before Annalise could finish her question.

Annalise smirked, and Harry’s instinctual dislike of her sharpened. Somehow, he had a feeling that even if she wasn’t staring at him with a strange mix of fascination and loathing, even if she had addressed him respectfully, he’d still find her off-putting. “And I’d rather I didn’t have to sit through an hour of you using my education in defensive magic as a pretext for telling your war hero stories. I guess neither of us is getting what we want today,” she said, twirling her pen between her fingers but not taking her eyes off of Harry.

“Five points from Ravenclaw for your disrespect, Miss Doyle,” Professor Arlowe said in a tired monotone.

All of the other Ravenclaws in the room groaned and shot Annalise nasty looks. She barely seemed to register them or the point deduction as she continued, “So, Harry…“

“Mr. Potter,” Harry corrected her again.

Annalise carried on talking; the only sign that she had heard Harry at all was a slight uptick in the intensity of her already soul-scorching glare. “…as I was saying before I was so _rudely_ interrupted, I was wondering if you were aware that your son James has already made sure that the entire school has heard all about your adventures ad nauseam? More likely than not his interpretations are grossly exaggerated, but still. Whatever personal anecdotes you were planning to use as your so-called lesson this afternoon, we’ve almost definitely heard some version of.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Harry said, through gritted teeth. The more he heard from this girl, the less he liked her. She reminded him strongly of someone unpleasant from a long time ago, he decided. Perhaps one of the Slytherin girls who’d been a year or two ahead of him at school. He had forgotten most of their names, but there had used to be a pack of them who’d always laugh among themselves and make smart comments whenever they saw him in the hallway or courtyard. Annalise could easily be one of their daughters.

The Slytherin boy sitting directly behind Annalise leaned forward and whispered something to her which set her snickering and earned her another ten-point deduction which again didn’t faze her at all. He, Harry noticed, bore a curious resemblance to Draco Malfoy, with his pale blond hair and thin, pointed face. In fact, the boy looked just as much like Draco as Scorpius–who Harry had encountered during a previous guest-lecture engagement and who was, by all accounts, a very pleasant young man–if not more. Professor Arlowe had not seemed to notice that it had been Malfoy-lookalike boy who’d provided the cause for Annalise’s giggling. But Harry had. “Is there something you’d like to say, Mr.–“

“My name is Steven,” said the boy, neglecting to give his surname. “And since you’ve been so kind as to invite me to speak, I want to say that in the future I think you should just stick to your real job instead of trying to dabble in teaching. I get a very strong impression that your being here is really little more than a vanity project. You’re here to make sure that we regard you as the hero and role model you see yourself as, not only keeping us all safe as an Auror but also helping to advance our education. It’s all very heavy-handed, in my opinion, _Mister Potter_.” He put particular stress on the last two words, and Annalise stifled another laugh.

“Is that what you were saying to Miss Doyle just now?” Harry asked.

“No,” said Steven, fixing Harry with a pointed “what-kind-of-idiot-do-you-take-me-for” look. He looked for a moment as if he was going to add to that statement, but then he shook his head and sat back down without another word.

“Right, then,” said Harry. As tempted as he was to tell Steven flat-out that he had no interest in self-promotion and the reason he did these guest lectures was because he genuinely liked seeing kids learning, he knew that arguing the point would only waste time. He had to continue on with the lesson. “Who wants to learn about patronuses?”

At once, excited murmurs of “I knew that was what he was going to talk about!” and “D’you think we’ll get to try doing the spell ourselves?” and “Ooh, my mum says that’s NEWT level magic!” spread throughout the classroom. Harry smiled. His lesson was back on track.

For the next fifteen minutes, the class went great. An overeager Ravenclaw in the first row who gave her name as Jessamine Jacobs and described herself as “a huge fan, personally” of his offered an over-long description of the history and uses of patronuses. Harry skipped the personal anecdote altogether to save time and moved right into the practical details of how to cast the charm. “I’ll give you a chance to try it, but keep in mind, it’s advanced magic,” he reminded everyone. “Even fully qualified witches and wizards struggle with conjuring a patronus, so none of you should get discouraged if you can’t get it today. All of that said, if I could learn it as a teenager I see no reason why any of you shouldn’t be able to, with a bit of hard work.”

As a demonstration, he then conjured up his own patronus for the class. The luminous silver stag was met with a chorus of oohs and ahhs from the students as it galloped about the room. He then had the students practice saying “expecto patronum” and drawing the correct size circles in the air with their wands. Annalise and Steven both appeared to be participating, reciting the incantation and waving their wands along with everybody else, though Annalise still looked vaguely cross. Harry decided it must just be her neutral face expression.

“Remember, class, the key to a successful patronus is concentrating on a single happy memory. The happier the memory and the better you’re able to focus on it, the better the spell works! Now, I want everybody to think of their happiest memory and then concentrate on it as hard as you can. All right?” Harry asked.

All of the students shut their eyes and began recalling and then concentrating on their chosen memories, most of them smiling as they did so. A Slytherin girl wearing a pink hair-bow giggled. The boy sitting next to her was humming to himself. Jessamine appeared to be concentrating a little too hard, by her knitted brow, but if one looked closely she was wearing a small grin. Annalise, on the other hand, looked no more cheerful - in fact, her expression was almost pained. 

A minute into the activity, she suddenly stood up and began walking quickly towards the door without offering any explanation. “Miss Doyle, where do you think you’re going?” Arlowe asked. “Sit back down or you’ll have detention for a week.” Annalise broke into a sprint.

 Harry raced after her without second thought about it. “Hold on, everyone. I’ll be right back. Keep focusing on those happy memories! Annalise, wait! Come back!” She was quick on her feet, and if she wasn’t wearing three-inch heels with her school uniform he didn’t know if he’d have been able to catch up with her. But she was, and he did, finally waylaying her near Myrtle’s bathroom. “Annalise, are you all right?” He noticed she was trembling, and there were tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. Her breath came in shallow, shuddering gasps.

He reached out a cautious hand to try and reassure her. She jumped backwards as if she’d been burned. “Don’t _touch_ me!” she screamed, whipping her wand out and brandishing it in his face. “If you even _try_ touching me again, Harry Potter, so help me I’ll make sure you regret it even if it means I have detention every day till I graduate.”

“Calm down, Annalise. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Harry said, putting his hands up defensively.

 “ _Scare_ me?” She let out a harsh, choked laugh, although he could see that her eyes were beginning to fill with tears. “Oh, no. _You_ don’t scare me, Harry Potter. There are only two things on this earth that scare me anymore and you are neither of them.” In that moment standing there in the hallway being scoffed at, Harry finally realized who it was that Annalise reminded him of – Bellatrix Lestrange. Same wild black hair, same furious glare, same brazen contempt, same peculiar ability to be self-aggrandising even while actively having a breakdown. The likeness was so close he didn’t know how he had failed to notice it earlier.

“Why did you run away?” he asked, changing the subject away from who was scaring who.

Annalise swallowed hard and wiped her face with her sleeve. Looking down at the dark stain left on her cuff by her mascara, she cursed under her breath. “None of your business why. I just did,” she spat. When Harry didn’t leave her alone after half a minute, she crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s it. That’s all I’m going to so say. So unless you _really_ want to just stand here staring at each other, why don’t you go back and finish your precious guest lecture?” She raised one eyebrow as if to say, “your move, Mr. Potter.”

There was nothing Harry wanted more right then than to get away from Annalise and her disconcerting resemblance to one of the worst people he’d ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with. He started to turn away, but stopped himself. “I can’t just leave you here.” If he did, he’d have taken off in the middle of teaching and chased her all over the first floor of the castle for nothing. She had to be persuaded to return to class.

"Yes, you can," she said.

“If you’re waiting for her to agree to come back with you, Mr. Potter, I can tell you now you’re wasting your time. She’s frightfully stubborn, especially when she’s upset,” said a condescending voice from behind. It was Steven, leaning casually against the wall with his arms crossed as if he’d been waiting for the right moment to butt in. “You go back. I’ll see to Anna.”

Harry gave him a sceptical look. “Did you get permission to leave the class?”

“Of course.” Steven sounded shocked that Harry didn’t trust him. He fished a neatly creased slip of parchment out of his pocket, unfolded it and thrust it at Harry.  “Professor gave me a pass. It’s not a fake, I swear. I’m rubbish at faking signatures anyway.”

“It’s true, he is,” Annalise chimed in.

“I was told to find you and send you back to finish the lesson, then find and deal with Anna,” said Steven as Harry inspected the parchment he had been handed.

It wasn’t an official hall pass so much as a note written and signed by Professor Arlowe which read, “Steven Edwards has my permission to be out of class as necessary until the end of the period in order to locate a missing classmate,” but as far as Harry could tell it appeared legitimate. The handwriting on the parchment looked exactly like the writing on the blackboard in Arlowe’s classroom. He handed the note back to Steven. “Well then. I’ll see you back in class in a few minutes, Mr. Edwards,” he said in what he hoped to be a suitably stern voice.

Steven nodded, then carefully re-folded the pass and stuck it back into his pocket. “I’ll return as soon as I get Anna sorted out, Mr. Potter, I promise.” He flashed a smile as Harry turned to go, but as soon as Harry had rounded the corner his expression rearranged into a smirk.

“Rubbish at faking signatures, eh?” Annalise whispered. “Stevie, you are positively shameless. That was too easy.”

“Yes, it was.” Steven shook his head. “I can _not_ believe that man is the current Head of the Auror Office.”


End file.
